Celebrating the women behind our games for #IWD2019 | Meet Jenny

For International Women’s Day 2019, we’re celebrating some of the women at Codemasters by shining a spotlight on what they do! This piece is on wonderful Social Media Manager for the F1 games franchise, Jenny Marshall. If you’ve ever wondered what being a Social Media Manager entails (it’s not just looking at memes, promise!), this insightful interview should provide you with some answers…

Hey Jenny! So… What do you do at Codemasters?

I’m the Social Media Manager for the F1 games, so I’m the one that posts the content up on the ‘Formula1game’ channels, and passes feedback across to the dev team (amongst other things!)

How long have you worked at Codemasters?

I joined Codemasters at the end of 2015, so I’ve been here for over three years now.

How did you get into the games industry?

Gaming was a huge part of growing up for me. As a child both my parents played PC games, and being in this industry somewhere has always been an aim of mine, albeit one of those ones you think is so unlikely that it’ll never happen to you. I started working in social media in other industries, and the skills I gained there – managing a brand’s social accounts, creating and implementing social media strategies as examples – held me in good stead, as well as a deep knowledge of F1 and games in general.

If you had to describe a typical day in your job, what would it look like?

One of the things I love about my job is that none of my days are quite the same! On a day to day basis I monitor everything that’s coming through to us, and ensure that the content going out across our social channels is high quality and relevant to our followers. A big part of this is also communicating feedback to the dev team and keeping track of our numbers and other analytics.

If we’ve got a trailer to release, for example, a day in my job is very much making sure everything’s all prepared and ready to go across our channels. This often means uploading videos, interviewing members of the dev team, preparing the blog, communicating with external parties prior to the trailer going live, and making sure everything’s ready for the right time. After it’s live, it’s then about the sentiment and numbers – did our followers like it, how well did it do, etc.

How did you get into social media professionally?

Social media and community management on this scale didn’t start becoming big until I was at university, but I instantly became interested in the challenges of communicating with it – on Twitter especially, with its (at the time) 140 character limit. I immersed myself in it, figured out how to get the best out of it, created workshops for other people to use and started my career that way.

What’s your favourite project you’ve worked on?

My favourite project I’ve worked on has to be the F1 Esports Series. I’m very proud of the F1 Esports Series! I very much create and responsible for the coverage of it on the Codemasters channels, from the first qualifying round to the last second of the final.

Firstly, watching those skilled racers I’d watched race across various leagues competing all in one place? Brilliant. I love being meeting the faces behind the gamertags! In 2017, the first ever F1 Esports final was being held at Abu Dhabi, actually at the Grand Prix at the last race of the season. I was privileged (and what a privilege) to go over and cover it. The final was held in the last garage of the pit lane, and so every day we were there I was in the paddock. An actual F1 paddock, at a Grand Prix. It was a dream come true, and I was living it – seeing my heroes wandering around the paddock on a daily basis.

From there, we went into the 2018 F1 New Balance Esports Series, and I loved every minute of that. Covering live racing on our game on our social channels is a huge buzz for me, as is watching the F1 Esports drivers grow and become part of the sport itself.

What are you playing at the moment?

I’m currently playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. When the teaser trailer for Dragon Age 4 dropped back in December of last year, I realised that I’d missed the Dragon Age series entirely. I love RPGs and I love immersing myself in a world and its lore!

What’s your favourite bit about your job?

Sharing the fandom of F1 with our community. That feeling when I know we’re going to be putting out something our players will love. That’s a really special feeling, and there’s not much that beats it!